fallout from a restless mind

#showertune: ‘back in black’ by AC/DC

apologies for not updating over the weekend, but you guys never read then anyways – and frankly why should you!?

saturday, being the 10th of July, was the 154th anniversary of the birth of Nikola Tesla. Tesla as I’m sure you all know is very famous for being not as famous as many people think he should be. he was undoubtedly a genius and his many ideas and inventions included spark plugs, neon lights, radar, an x-ray device, several remote control systems and of course his pioneering work on the generation and distribution of alternating current.

while many people remain bitter about Thomas Edison’s ability to retain his reputation as the ‘inventor of electricity’ despite the many weaknesses of his DC systems and the vicious smear campaign he conducted against Tesla and his work, the story seems to me to serve as a useful foil to the corrupt mythology of The American Dream.

anyone can move to America, start by doing manual labour, work their way up to truly great things, then have someone richer, more socially palatable and more politically artful steal all their thunder (and lightening), become even more rich and famous from it, and leave them to die alone, heavily indebted and relatively unknown.

this is ...

a place designed to house thought excesses. if my mind is archimedes' bath, the water my general thoughts and archimedes himself the kind of clever thoughts i'm supposed to put in my work, then what you will find here is what escapes over the brim as the skinny boffin lowers himself into the tub. it exists, further indulging the analogy, on the basis that it might be necessary to collect and measure the runoff in order to know the volume of the person.